Virtual Tunnel Interface

This chapter describes how to configure a VTI tunnel.

• About Virtual Tunnel Interfaces, on page 1• Guidelines for Virtual Tunnel Interfaces, on page 1• Create a VTI Tunnel, on page 2

About Virtual Tunnel InterfacesThe ASA supports a logical interface called Virtual Tunnel Interface (VTI). As an alternative to policy basedVPN, a VPN tunnel can be created between peers with Virtual Tunnel Interfaces configured. This supportsroute based VPN with IPsec profiles attached to the end of each tunnel. This allows dynamic or static routesto be used. Egressing traffic from the VTI is encrypted and sent to the peer, and the associated SA decryptsthe ingress traffic to the VTI.

Using VTI does away with the requirement of configuring static crypto map access lists and mapping themto interfaces. You no longer have to track all remote subnets and include them in the crypto map access list.Deployments become easier, and having static VTI which supports route based VPN with dynamic routingprotocol also satisfies many requirements of a virtual private cloud.

Guidelines for Virtual Tunnel InterfacesIPv6

• IPv6 is not supported.

General Configuration Guidelines

• VTIs are only configurable in IPsec mode. To terminate GRE tunnels on an ASA is unsupported.

• You can use dynamic or static routes for traffic using the tunnel interface.

• The MTU for VTIs is automatically set, according to the underlying physical interface.

• VTI supports IKEv1 and uses IPsec for sending and receiving data between the tunnel's source anddestination.

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• If Network Address Translation has to be applied, the IKE and ESP packets will be encapsulated in theUDP header.

• IKE and IPsec security associations will be re-keyed continuously regardless of data traffic in the tunnel.This ensures that VTI tunnels are always up.

• Tunnel group name must match what the peer will send as its IKEv1 identity.

• For IKEv1 in LAN-to-LAN tunnel groups, you can use names which are not IP addresses, if the tunnelauthentication method is digital certificates and/or the peer is configured to use aggressive mode.

• VTI and crypto map configurations can co-exist on the same physical interface, provided the peer addressconfigured in the crypto map and the tunnel destination for the VTI are different.

• By default, all traffic through VTI is encrypted.

• There are no security level configurations for VTI interfaces.

• Access list can be applied on a VTI interface to control traffic through VTI.

• Only BGP is supported over VTI.

• If ASA is terminating IOS IKEv2 VTI clients, disable the config-exchange request on IOS, because ASAcannot retrieve the mode-CFG attributes for this L2L session initiated by an IOS VTI client.

Context Mode

Supported in single mode only.

Firewall Mode

Supported in routed mode only.

Create a VTI TunnelTo configure a VTI tunnel, create an IPsec proposal (transform set). You will need to create an IPsec profilethat references the IPsec proposal, followed by a VTI interface with the IPsec profile. Configure the remotepeer with identical IPsec proposal and IPsec profile parameters. SA negotiation will start when all tunnelparameters are configured.

For the ASA which is a part of both the VPN VTI domains, and has BGP adjacency on the physical interface:

When a state change is triggered due to the interface health check, the routes in the physical interface will bedeleted until BGP adjacency is re-established with the new active peer. This behavior does not apply to logicalVTI interfaces.

Note

Procedure

Step 1 Add an IPsec Proposal (Transform Sets).Step 2 Add an IPsec Profile.

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Virtual Tunnel InterfaceCreate a VTI Tunnel

Step 3 Add a VTI Tunnel.

Add an IPsec Proposal (Transform Sets)A transform set is required to secure traffic in a VTI tunnel. Used as a part of the IPsec profile, it is a set ofsecurity protocols and algorithms that protects the traffic in the VPN.

Before you begin

• You can use either pre-shared key or certificates for authenticating the IKEv1 session associated with aVTI. You must configure the pre-shared key under the tunnel group used for the VTI.

• For certificate based authentication using IKEv1,you must specify the trustpoint to be used at the initiator.For the responder, you must configure the trustpoint in the tunnel-group command.

Add an IPsec ProfileAn IPsec profile contains the required security protocols and algorithms in the IPsec proposal or transformset that it references. This ensures a secure, logical communication path between two site-to-site VTI VPNpeers.

Procedure

Step 1 Set a name for the profile:

crypto ipsec profile name

Example:ciscoasa(config)#crypto ipsec profile PROFILE1

Step 2 Set the IKEv1 proposal. Enter the following command in the crypto ipsec profile command sub-mode:

set ikev1 transform set set_name

In this example, SET1 is the IKEv1 proposal set created previously.ciscoasa(config-ipsec-profile)#set ikev1 transform-set SET1

Step 3 (Optional) Specify the duration of the security association:

set security-association lifetime {seconds number | kilobytes {number | unlimited}}

Example:ciscoasa(config-ipsec-profile)#set security-association lifetimeseconds 120 kilobytes 10000

Step 4 (Optional) Configure the end of the VTI tunnel to act only as a responder:

responder-only

• You can configure one end of the VTI tunnel to perform only as a responder. The responder-only endwill not initiate the tunnel or rekeying.

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Virtual Tunnel InterfaceAdd an IPsec Proposal (Transform Sets)

Step 5 (Optional) Specify the PFS group. Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) generates a unique session key for eachencrypted exchange. This unique session key protects the exchange from subsequent decryption. To configurePFS, you have to select the Diffie-Hellman key derivation algorithm to use when generating the PFS sessionkey. The key derivation algorithms generate IPsec security association (SA) keys. Each group has a differentsize modulus. A larger modulus provides higher security, but requires more processing time. You must havematching Diffie-Hellman groups on both peers.

set pfs {group1 | group2 | group5}

Example:ciscoasa(config-ipsec-profile)# set pfs group2

Add a VTI InterfaceTo create a new VTI interface and establish a VTI tunnel, perform the following steps:

Implement IP SLA to ensure that the tunnel remains up when a router in the active tunnel is unavailable. SeeConfigure Static Route Tracking in the ASAGeneral Operations Configuration Guide in http://www.cisco.com/go/asa-config.

Note

Procedure

Step 1 Create a new tunnel interface:

interface tunnel tunnel_interface_number

Example:ciscoasa(config)#interface tunnel 100

Specify a tunnel ID, from a range of 0 to 100. Up to 100 VTI interfaces are supported.

If you will be migrating configurations from other devices to ASA 5506 devices, use the tunnel IDrange of 1 - 100. This is to ensure compatibility of the tunnel range of 1 - 100 available in ASA5506 devices.

Note

Step 2 Enter the name of the VTI interface.

Enter the following command in the interface tunnel command submode:

nameif interface name

Example:ciscoasa(config-if)#nameif vti

Step 3 Enter the IP address of the VTI interface.

ip address IP addressmask

Example:ciscoasa(config-if)#ip address 192.168.1.10 255.255.255.254

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Virtual Tunnel InterfaceAdd a VTI Interface

Step 4 Specify the tunnel source interface.

tunnel source interface interface name

Example:ciscoasa(config-if)#tunnel source interface outside

Step 5 Specify the tunnel destination IP address.

tunnel destination IP address

Example:ciscoasa(config-if)#tunnel destination 10.1.1.1

Step 6 Configure the tunnel with tunnel mode IPsec IPv4.

tunnel mode ipsec ipv4

Example:ciscoasa(config-if)#tunnel mode ipsec ipv4

Step 7 Assign the IPsec profile to tunnel.

tunnel protection ipsec IPsec profile

Example:ciscoasa(config-if)#tunnel protection ipsec Profile1

This new VTI can be used to create an IPsec site-to-site VPN.

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Virtual Tunnel InterfaceAdd a VTI Interface

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Virtual Tunnel InterfaceAdd a VTI Interface